Zealous Culture Transforms
Brazil's Mighty Banco Bradesco

CIDADE DE DEUS, Brazil -- People here like to say that Banco Bradesco SA, Latin America's largest and perhaps most powerful bank holding company, sometimes resembles a religious order.

Step inside Bradesco's inner sanctum in Cidade de Deus -- Portuguese for City of God -- the company town the bank built just outside Sao Paulo. In the communal executive suite, the bank's brain trust labors without individual secretaries and, except for the bank president, without individual desks. The dozen executive vice presidents spend most...